Hannah and Her Sisters (1986), Woody Allen’s biggest success of the eighties and his most popular film since Annie Hall, returns the director / writer to the same general territory of modern life and the challenges of sustaining romantic relationships, but this time within the context of family. Mia Farrow takes the title role of […]
Hitchcock patented the romantic thriller with The Lady Vanishes (1938), a bright, breezy confection that takes his quirky cast (and the audience along with them) from an idyllic picture postcard of fantasy Europe to a nightmarish journey to the heart of the dark days of World War II that lay just ahead. This snappy, sophisticated […]
You know the scene: Burt Lancaster and Deborah Kerr rolling around the beach as the surf crashes around them and the foamy tide washes around their clenched bodies. It’s a cliché now, but it’s as primal as erotic scenes got in the production code days, and it helped transform From Here to Eternity (1954), Fred […]
Orson Welles’ 1952 masterpiece Othello, his shoestring-budgeted adaptation of the Shakespeare tragedy, is an example of creative will overcoming physical liability. Using primitive (by Hollywood standards) equipment and a rotating crew, and interrupting his shoot to raise money, Welles shot in spurts over three years all over Italy and Morocco and matched images shot in […]
